Smartphone Launch announced today that it has closed $200 million in the Series C round, led by investment company Tiger Global. In this round, Consumer Electronics Company is currently valued at $1.3 billion.
Other investors in the round included existing backers such as Venture Costume GV, Highland Europe, EQT, Latitude, I2BF and Tapestry. Founded previously by Carl Pei, who co-founded the Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus, the company is known for its high-performance devices at competitive prices, but received new strategic support from Nikhil Kamath and Qualcomm Ventures. No new funding will bring total funds to more than $450 million.
“Karl and his team are rethinking hardware and software with AI overlays to place their products in the next era of Personal Technology. We are excited to partner with this exceptional team, pioneering the AI-Native experience.”
The company said it will soon begin fundraising another community. In the previous community round, the company raised a total of $11.5 million.
The company has been betting on design differentiation so far, and has been providing startups well. It is not said that more than $1 billion in sales were recorded earlier this year. An early startup investor told TechCrunch that he was pleased with the company’s growth trajectory and its path to profitability.
The startup said up to this point, it spent time building supply chains and infrastructure to launch the products within months and ship them all around the world. In particular, the recently launched phone (3) showcases the company’s signature transparent design aesthetic and unique user interface, but it was just the second mobile phone to receive a popular distribution in the US.
According to Analytics Firm IDC, India, the largest market, does not have a market share of less than 1% in the world’s largest market. The company has shipped 5.1 million units so far, and the company has shipped over 1 million units in the second quarter of 2025. IDC said the global expansion is slow as 80% of its units are still sold in Asia.
TechCrunch Events
San Francisco
|
October 27th-29th, 2025
PEI says he wants to target his brand to the next generation of users who may seek alternatives beyond his current position.
“The way we distinguished brands and differentiated our products really resonates with our consumer groups. We are targeting the next generation. They are interested in technology. They are interested in creativity and design, and they really found resonance among that consumer groups.”
Tony Zappara, a partner at Highland Europe, the company’s existing investor, said the company has room to fulfill its promise and grow in this huge industry. He said it is not currently an industry-recognised name. This has its own advantage in attracting talent and building supply chain relationships.
AI Vision
The company wants to build an operating system with personalization capabilities that could expand beyond AI and smartphones. Currently, I’m only looking at some glimpses of the operating system’s AI. Features such as essential search, as well as smart search functions that help users find information across their devices. To lead the AI services effort, the startup hired Sélim Benayat, former executive of Linktree and founder of Bento, a platform that creates personalized landing pages for social media profiles.
Zappalà said the challenges in building such an operating system are both customer experience and trust issues.
“I don’t think the challenge of building an effective AI-first experience is unique. It’s more than a technical challenge. AI features need to reach a stage where users are not double-checking the output,” he said.
Companies like Apple struggle to effectively integrate AI capabilities into their operating systems. For anything, it is difficult to find the right balance between novelty and usefulness while performing AI functions.
PEI believes that smartphones will continue to be the best way to deliver AI and will become the “dominant form factor for all consumer AI applications” for at least three to five years, he said in a conversation with TechCrunch in July.
With the announcement of the funding, the company said it plans to launch AI-first devices next year. However, there were no many success stories in the AI hardware space. AI hardware startup Humane has been sold to HP after struggling with AI PIN devices, and AI assistant company Rabbit has been working on improving its R1 device and recently released a new software update after not being satisfied with its first iteration.
